Why Can’t I Hire The Right Sales People?

By Lee B. Salz

A
disconnect exists between sales managers and recruiters that causes
challenges for both. Together, they can resolve this issue by
creating their company’s Sales Talent Screening Program.

Candidate screening is one of the most difficult tasks that
recruiters and managers face. Most will tell you that screening
sales talent is the toughest of all. Why? Sales people are trained
in the art of persuasion. They know how to provide the desired
responses to the questions. Even more daunting is when you are
interviewing sales people that worked for a competitor. These sales
people know the language and industry buzz words making it even more
challenging to screen them. Fret not! It is possible to successfully
screen sales talent, but there is work to be done before you even
look at a résumé.

The most important step a company can take is to develop a sales
talent screening program. This helps bring focus to the initiative.
The mission of this program is to provide data that allows for the
measurement of the candidate pedigree versus the desired profile.
Think in terms of formulating a marriage, a sales marriage, that is.

This program should be fully documented showing step-by-step the
components of the screening program. It is best to define who will
be interviewing the candidates and their role in the interview
process. It should define the tools that will be used as well as
their purpose. Below are seven key components of an effective sales
talent screening program.

1. Ideal Sales Person Profile. It has always surprised me how
many companies have fully documented profiles of their ideal client.
Yet, few have a profile of their ideal sales person. How can you
screen when you don’t know for what you are screening? Many of you
have a clear picture in mind of the profile of your ideal mate. My
bet is most of your close friends can rattle off your profile in a
heartbeat. The same principle applies to sales talent. If you don’t
know exactly what you are looking for, how will you find it?

This profile should be fully detailed.
Some of the areas to address in the profile are the experience you
expect that candidate to already have, the skills that the candidate
should already possess, and the skills you are not willing to teach.
Truth is, this is an extensive topic about which I have dedicated
another article.

The lack of a fully-defined profile of the ideal sales person is the
most common cause of bad sales marriages. It is also the major point
of frustration between sales managers and recruiters. Recruiters
often tell me that they feel they are throwing darts while
blindfolded because they have so little detail about the desired
profile.

2. Always Be Recruiting. In sales, there is an old
expression. “The toughest time to make a sale is when you really
need one.” The same holds true for recruiting. When a slot is open
on the sales team, it becomes an all hands on deck exercise to fill
it. While the seat is open, revenue targets are in jeopardy. This
leads many to forget the profile of the ideal sales person profile
in the interest of filling a seat. Playing this forward a bit, the
seat becomes vacant again a short time later when either side
determines that it is not a good fit.

Sales recruiting is a year-round exercise. The best sales forces are
always on the look out for strong sales talent. Find a company that
identifies a strong candidate that meets their profile who wouldn’t
find a way to hire this individual. It is a rarity to say the least.
Sales teams have turnover either driven by the company or the
employee. It is best to have a candidate portfolio at the ready than
to begin a process of surfacing candidates when a seat is open. Poor
hiring decisions are made out of desperation to fill a seat. The
open seat is a cost to the company every day it is unfilled. Yet,
the cost is more painful if the seat is filled by someone who
doesn’t fit.

3. Reverse Interviewing. Since the intent of the process is
for both sides to be able to determine if a marriage should be
formulated, a wonderful technique is reverse interviewing. This is
an interview performed by a member of the sales team who would be a
peer if the candidate was hired. It is important that the
individuals selected to participate in this step are loyal to the
company, knowledgeable, and make a favorable impression. However,
the “interviewer” does not ask any questions of the candidate. As
you know, it is very easy to get yourself in hot water if illegal
questions are asked. Thus, you don’t want untrained people asking
questions. There are two purposes of this component of the sales
talent screening program. The first is to provide the candidate with
an opportunity to ask questions of someone who would be their peer
if they were to be hired. In essence, it is a way for them to get a
picture of a day in the life of this job.

The second purpose is to measure how the candidate prepares for a
sales call. A debrief is conducted with the “reverse interviewer” to
see what questions were asked. If the candidate took advantage of
this opportunity, they brought prepared, insightful questions and
wrote down answers. If they didn’t, what kind of preparation will
the candidate do for a sales call? How interested are they really in
this job? Every once in a while, a candidate will ask a question of
the sales person like, “Can you take off at noon on Fridays?”
Needless to say, the lapse in judgment raises a red flag of concern?

4. Standard Interview Questions. Often times, many candidates
are screened for one job slot. This creates a need to be able to
compare candidates to each other, in addition to the profile. To do
this, a standard set of interview questions are needed. The
responses are documented during the interview and reviewed after a
candidate leaves the office. These questions are not designed to
provide right or wrong answers. They are designed to see if this
candidate’s thought process is congruent with the needs of your
business and with the profile of the ideal sales person.

When formulating your list of standard questions, it is helpful to
include some sales scenarios that are common in your environment.
“Your client balks at the price of your proposal. What do you do?”
It is also helpful to have questions that show what makes this
person tick. Since few colleges have “sales” as a major, it is
always interesting to find how someone arrived at a sales career.
“Of all of the careers you could select, why did you pick sales?”

The hot topic in today’s recruiting world is behavioral interviewing
which is a powerful tool. Behavioral interviewing, also called
competency-based interviewing, focuses on past behavior. As a doctor
friend of mine always says, the best predictor of future behavior is
past behavior. The idea here is not to ask arbitrary questions, but
rather to ask questions that help to expose areas that affect the
sales marriage. If your company is always changing, you might want
to determine how the candidate handles change. “Please share with me
a time where you had to adapt to change.” Like with any good
interview, additional probing is necessary to get to the root of the
issue. “How did you deal with that? What did you learn from the
experience?”

You can probably imagine just how hard
it is to formulate questions that demonstrate if this marriage will
work if you don’t have a profile against which to compare.

5. Mock Sales Call. What better way to see if someone fits
into your company’s selling environment than to put them right in
it! To do this effectively, you need to create a scenario for the
candidate. I’ve found it most beneficial to give the candidate the
scenario with one day’s notice so they can prepare. They should be
provided with the same amount of information a sales person in your
company normally has before making an initial sales call.

Those members of your company who participate in the exercise should
be somewhat scripted. I say “somewhat” because you don’t want it to
be so dry that it is unrealistic, but without any scripting it can
be hard to stay in character.

The last piece you need to do this well is a score sheet. Know what
you are looking to measure in the process and score accordingly. Can
they conduct a thorough needs analysis? Did they identify the
challenges faced by this prospect? Would you buy from them?

It
is best if the scoring is done by a non-participant of the mock
sales call. It is very distracting for the candidate if someone jots
notes while they are speaking. What happens is that the candidate
spends the rest of the exercise trying to read what was written.

6. Online Assessment Testing. There are a myriad of tools
that are very helpful in the screening process for both personality
and skill. Where some err is in the application of the data from
these tools. Few, if any, of the online assessment companies suggest
that their tool should be used to make a hire/no hire decision. The
most appropriate application is to treat it as an additional data
point in the sales talent screening program.

Linda Moeller, Product Director of market
leader
Employee Continuum,
has seen companies use this great tool incorrectly. “We have seen
many organizations fail to take the context of an organization into
account when deciding the most appropriate assessment to use. For
example, many organizations assume that implementing a sales
assessment will guarantee them improved sales performers. This is
not necessarily the case. For example, the personality
characteristics required for a sales person selling office supplies
to purchasing agents are very different than those required for a
salesperson selling everything needed for a dentist office. In
order to be successful, an organization needs to consider the type
of relationship they have with their clientele and the competencies
that will make these relationships successful.”

7. The Ultimate Screening Tool. Writing is a lost art. Yet,
we are more dependent on written communication than ever before.
Email! Is there anything worse than a poorly written email that is
sent to a prospect? It doesn’t matter how good your product or
service is, your company now looks sloppy and unprofessional.

An
effective technique for screening sales talent is the use of the
mini-business plan. When the candidate has satisfactorily completed
all of the other steps of the pre-offer process, the request is made
for a one-page business plan that shows how they would approach the
job. I mention three times that I’m only looking for a one-page plan
and ask when they can send it to me. It is important that the
submission date be asked of the candidate, not the other way around
as you will see in a moment.

Of
all of the techniques that I have used over the years, this is the
one where I have the most candidate fall out and I was always happy
to learn that this sales marriage wouldn’t work, before it was
formulated.

This technique allows you to evaluate a number of important areas:

Can they communicate in
written form coherently? If you were a client receiving this
document, what message do you get about its author?

Do they understand what
the role entails? Since this component is performed late in the
process, they should have a clear picture of the job and
expectations.

Is their approach
consistent with the expectations of management? It is best to
know now if you don’t feel comfortable with their game plan.

Can they meet a
self-imposed deadline? If the plan is late, the candidate is no
longer considered for the role.

Can they follow
directions? I asked for a one-pager, not an epic.

Having a
sales talent screening program has many benefits. The most obvious
impact is a longer sales tenure of your sales team which means an
increase in sales performance and a reduction in personnel turnover.
This can do nothing short of helping the bottom line of any company.